


leave me out with the waste

by fitz_y



Category: Inception
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Canon Compliant, Community: kink_bingo, Fisting, Gunplay, M/M, Male Slash, Rimming, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-26
Updated: 2011-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:22:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitz_y/pseuds/fitz_y
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur had thought he never wanted to see Nash again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leave me out with the waste

**Author's Note:**

> Originally started (shamefully long ago) for the [Inception Rare Pair Fest](http://forgerness.livejournal.com/48558.html). Also for my [](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**kink_bingo**](http://kink-bingo.dreamwidth.org/) square “held down”. For all you lovely, lovely people who commented over at the fest, thank you so much for your encouragement; it really helped motivate me to finally finish this. I want to bake you cookies!!!! Thanks also to the peeps at [](http://pornspiration.livejournal.com/profile)[**pornspiration**](http://pornspiration.livejournal.com/) for helping me get out of my smut rut. Finally, a huge huge thanks goes out to my amazing team of kick-ass betas, you are all my rocks: you read so carefully and thoughtfully, you support and cheerlead and push me in so many wonderful ways. I ♥ you so very very much and your contribution to this fic has been invaluable:[](http://yllenk.livejournal.com/profile)[ **yllenk**](http://yllenk.livejournal.com/), [](http://larrrubio.livejournal.com/profile)[**larrrubio**](http://larrrubio.livejournal.com/), and [](http://skellywag.livejournal.com/profile)[**skellywag**](http://skellywag.livejournal.com/). All remaining errors are mine.

Arthur rubbed at his eyes, the small letters on the screen blurring. Really, learning that Robert Fischer had gotten A’s in marketing at Mendoza Business School, but that he had only managed a C in his college writing class wasn’t helping his research much. He stood up, sending his chair skittering loudly across the room on its wheels. He’d lost his focus.

Arthur paced over to the heavy door, swung it open, inhaled the evening. Outside the warehouse, night was spreading gently over the streets of Paris. He considered sequestering himself in a corner café, sipping a cognac and people-watching, losing himself in mindless speculation about strangers who were not Robert Fischer. This whole operation had barely started and it was already falling apart at the seams. Their potential new architect hadn’t returned from her sulking, as Cobb had seemed so sure she would; both chemists Arthur had contacted had flatly refused to work with Cobb, throwing around words like “unstable” and “Somancin addict”; Cobb had been in Mombasa for three days now, apparently his efforts (that would most probably be fruitless) to recruit Eames taking him longer than expected; Arthur’s research on Fischer kept stalling out on dead ends. From his four years at Notre Dame, all that was left were addresses of posh private apartments and the small numbers and letters on his college transcript. Had the man not cultivated any friendships? Done anything remarkable? Moved beyond the locked circle of his father’s acquaintances?

Digging his hands deep into his pockets, Arthur stretched, framed by the doorway, facing the warm street which was alive with leafy shadows. He threw back his head and closed his eyes, feeling the frustration thrumming through him. This was a bad idea. A niggling voice urged him to jump ship, to leave Cobb before he sank even further into restless desperation, dragging Arthur down with him never to resurface. The voice insisted that Cobb would never take what Arthur was offering, that he’d remain locked away in his own prison of nightmares forever, that he’d never give himself over to Arthur’s care, turn to him, belly-up and pleading to be loved, to be fixed, to be put back together. Arthur’s fist clenched in his pocket, and he opened his eyes. It was one of those nights: they were few and far between, but when they hit, they hit with the impact of a wrecking ball. Arthur needed to get out of his head, out of his body, out of his job. It was either that or cut all ties, ditch Cobb, double- and triple-cross him to make his own way in dream-sharing, and that he wasn’t ready to do. Not yet. He’d waited too long to have Cobb for his very own; he was too close to walk away. And Cobb needed him, too, he just didn’t know how much yet. If Arthur waited a little longer, just a little longer . . .

A corner café and a snifter of cognac wouldn’t be enough for tonight; Arthur needed a warm body to rough up, to shove back at him and refocus his thoughts.

He was turning back to the emptiness of the warehouse when he heard it, the click of a safety, freezing him in his tracks. “Hello, Arthur,” a familiar voice, a reedy voice resonated softly in the empty street.

“Nash.”

“Put your hands up. Where I can see them.”

Arthur complied, cursing himself silently.

“Walk back inside.”

Arthur tensed as he strode through the doorway, listening for Nash’s steps behind him.

The heavy door banged shut and Nash’s footfalls—boots, he was wearing boots, probably snakeskin, knowing him—echoed against the concrete floor. Arthur was only about four feet from his desk, where his Glock rested securely in the bottom drawer, yet there was no way he could move fast enough to get it out and get a shot off with Nash’s gun trained on him. Nash had always had an itchy trigger finger.

“Hold it,” Nash’s voice—quavering like a jittery sixteen-year-old trying desperately to sound authoritative—arrested him. “Okay, you can turn around now.”

Bruised and shabby, Nash looked like he’d been put through the wringer. His hair hung loose in his eyes; a yellowed and purple bruise bloomed across his left cheekbone. Under a leather jacket, a tight white T-shirt, stained in parts with a rusty mixture of dirt and blood, stretched across his frame, and a thick square of gauze poked out at his hipbone where his shirt rode up. Gun trained shakily on Arthur, Nash was listing to the left, favoring his right side. Arthur exhaled softly, all his senses on high alert. Strung out and shaking, Nash trembled with the feral exhaustion of a wounded coyote. Arthur had been around enough to know that all animals became fiercest right before they collapsed.

“You look like shit, asshole,” Arthur spat out.

Nash’s eyes scanned him and then he quirked a smile, a bloody crack showing on the left side of his upper lip. “And you look good, Arthur, as always,” he said, almost bitterly.

Neither spoke as they stared each other down: Nash’s eyes flitted over Arthur’s body, resting on his arms, where he’d rolled up his shirtsleeves.

Arthur waited, tensed. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Nash’s gaze refocused on Arthur’s face, eyes narrowing. He shook his head back and forth a few times, as if clearing a haze from behind his eyes. “I’m lucky.”

Arthur shrugged. Nash certainly didn’t look lucky.

Taking a step closer, Nash flaunted the gun in his face. “Now, tell me about the job you’re doing for Saito.”

“Interrogation at gun point? That’s not your usual style.”

“Don’t have the time or resources for extraction. I do what I have to in order to stay alive.”

“If this is your attempt to get your old job back, it’s not going to work. Dom may not have shot you for selling us out, but he’s through with you just the same.”

At the mention of Dom, something unreadable flashed across his face—pain, regret, uncertainty—it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

“I’ve got a new gig now. And I don’t want to shoot you, Arthur, but if you don’t tell me what new job you’re working on here in Paris, I will.”

“You’re working for Cobol now? Is that it?” If Arthur could keep him talking long enough, something would eventually give him the opportunity he needed to create a distraction.

Nash shrugged his left shoulder; the gun wavered again. “I adapt. I survive. I’m like a cat, I’ve got nine fucking lives.”

“You adapt,” Arthur scoffed. “You mean you’ll be anybody’s bitch for the right price.”

“Say what you want, shithead. I make my own way.” He was tapping the toe of his right boot against the concrete floor in a quick, staccato rhythm.

“You don’t even know what self-respect is, the way you always roll over and offer yourself to the first person who comes along smelling like power. You cower and beg. I don’t know how you survived as long as you did in this industry, being such a gutless, useless asshole.”

Nash stepped forward, he was gripping his pistol so tightly that his knuckles were white; his nostrils flared. Arthur could see the diagram of colors and swelling on his face in minute detail. “And you follow Cobb blindly. I think for myself, man. But you two, that’s some fucked-up co-dependency you’ve got going on there.”

“That’s not what you said in Budapest.”

Baiting Nash was easy.

Gaze trained darkly on Arthur, he leaned in, jamming the smooth barrel of the pistol against Arthur’s jugular. “Shut the fuck up. I can easily change my mind about whether or not I want to shoot you. At first I didn’t like the idea much, but now it’s starting to grow on me.”

Nash’s quick inhales skittered across Arthur’s cheek, Arthur could smell the day-old sweat, the dried blood under the odor of antiseptic, the remnants of his musky cologne. Shit, when was the last time Nash had taken a bath?

“Let’s try this again,” he ground out, emphasizing each word with the barrel of his pistol against Arthur’s throat. “What did Saito hire you for?”

“He hired us to fuck you up the ass, Nash. If you think you’re getting anything out of me, you’re wrong.”

Face level with Nash’s, Arthur stood his ground. Nash growled, stepped back just far enough to pistol whip Arthur hard across the mouth, smacking his jaw to the right. Arthur tensed his neck as the blow landed, stepping away from the strike as much he could, tasting the metallic bite of blood on his tongue, and decidedly not thinking about the pain.

“Just tell me what you’re doing for Saito. Is he trying to get revenge on Cobol? Just tell me, and I won’t fucking hurt you, man,” Nash whined as his hand jerked back, ready to wield the pistol yet again. In the split second between Nash’s rearing back and his connecting with Arthur’s face, Arthur sensed an opening, and he stepped into the attack, letting his instincts take over as his thoughts fell quietly away. In the space of a heartbeat, his left hand shot out, encircling Nash’s bony wrist at the same time that his hips snapped fluidly to the side to clear his torso from the line of fire and drive the force of his body against Nash’s wrist, yanking it down and close. He dug his short nails into Nash’s skin, tugging him off balance. Snarling, Nash stumbled as Arthur reached in with his right hand and twisted the gun from his grasp by the barrel. Turning the weapon on Nash, Arthur skidded a step away. Yet Nash crowded in close, not giving Arthur any distance, seemingly not caring that Arthur now held the power of a 9mm at his fingertip. Maybe he thought Arthur wouldn’t shoot him. He was wrong.

“Nash,” Arthur warned, shifting back. But Nash was on him, faster than Arthur had ever seen him move, faster than anybody that beat up should be able to move. Nash twisted towards Arthur’s gun hand, slapping hard at the sensitive underside of his wrist, sending the gun spinning across the floor. Arthur retaliated with two sharp jabs to his face; dancing closer to Nash, he ducked down, and drove forward with his legs to throw his bodyweight into a double uppercut, catching him under the jaw simultaneously with both fists, pulling his punches just enough to not snap his neck. He watched with satisfaction as Nash’s body sprawled backwards and collided with the stack of boxes lining the wall. Landing with a groan, Nash slid down the scattered cardboard to collapse on the floor.

Cautiously, moving lightly on the balls of his feet, Arthur paced over to him. Nash’s face had broken out with a sheen of sweat, his skin looked almost translucent under the aging bruise painted across his cheekbone. As Arthur approached, his eyes opened, and for a long, heavy moment, they just stared at each other, waiting, panting. Then Nash flinched, eyes flicking to the left, and he pushed up to scramble on all fours towards the gun at the same moment that Arthur dropped down on top of him, cinching an arm around his throat, sandwiching him with his body as he slammed his chest hard to the floor. Arthur tightened his hold, and Nash gagged, choked, then sagged underneath him, his whole body going slack.

Arthur eased off ever so slightly, suddenly aware of Nash’s thin form stretched out under him, of the small curve of his lower spine against Arthur’s groin, of the shuddering rise and fall of his back against Arthur’s chest.

“You’ve lost weight,” he said matter-of-factly, speaking into Nash’s hair where he held him down.

“Torture will do that to you,” Nash laughed shakily.

“Are we done here?” Arthur felt suddenly tired—his face smarting, pain throbbing lightly under his wrist—and he knew with a blank certainty that he didn’t want to kill Nash. But he might have to.

“No, we can’t . . . I can’t go back until I . . . fuck, Arthur. Just fucking get off me, okay?”

Arthur ground his hips down against Nash’s back and butt as he began to squirm, resolutely ignoring the heat pooling slowly in his groin. “I’m not letting you up until I know you’re going to leave and never come back,” he said evenly.

And then Nash began to thrash in earnest, flailing his hands, trying to get purchase on the floor so he could lever himself up, kicking out with his legs, twisting his torso against Arthur’s weight. Slipping his arm from Nash’s throat, Arthur grabbed at his hands, trapping them under his own fingers, so the two of them were splayed on the cold concrete like starfish suctioned together.

“Jesus, Arthur,” Nash sputtered. “You’re crushing me.”

With a grunt, Nash managed to twist a hand free, and he struck his elbow up hard and sharp into the soft space below Arthur’s ribs, making him loosen his grip enough for Nash to buck up and throw him off, spilling Arthur onto his back on the floor. Nash scrambled over to Arthur on all fours and threw a wide right hook at Arthur’s jaw. But his movements had slowed, his last desperate surge of energy obviously having drained him. The punch soared towards Arthur with plenty of warning, and, on his back, he rolled easily out of the way before thrusting up onto his knees, shoving the heels of both hands against Nash’s chest, using the momentum of the fall to send them sprawling onto each other on the ground. As they landed, Arthur clutched Nash’s wrists with both hands and dragged them above his head, pinning him. One thigh was wedged between Nash’s legs, holding them pried apart, and he could feel the surprising firm bulge of Nash’s cock.

“Like that, do you?” Arthur ground out, face inches away from Nash’s.

His chest was tightening into fierce knots, and he wanted to hurt him. To hurt him for not being enough, for selling them out, for daring to leave and for having the gall to come back, for letting his emotions seep into his face, body, and voice, for contaminating Arthur with the stench of his desperation.

Nash stared defiantly at Arthur, his narrowed gaze stupidly self-assured despite his helpless position on the floor. “Fuck you, man. You’ll tell me what I want to know eventually.”

With Nash’s thin frame pressed hotly against him, the hardness under his denim a firm weight at Arthur’s thigh, his scent of sweat, fighting, and fear invading Arthur’s senses, Arthur clenched his jaw, willing his thoughts, his memories away, digging his fingers into the soft flesh at Nash’s wrists to keep himself in the moment. _Nash wants to kill you. Nash is probably working for Cobol._ But it couldn’t be helped. Arthur remembered a tumbledown safehouse in a frostbitten Budapest; he remembered how raw it had felt to have their chemist’s death in the air between them, the unavoidable smarting wound from a job gone south. She’d been young and rather brilliant, with too-big glasses, and too-rare a smile. And she’d lapped up praise like a hungry wolf pup, another snarly, eager girl that Cobb had handpicked. He remembered Cobb’s unconscious body sweating out an infection from a bullet wound on a thin metal cot. He remembered hours of changing bandages and sheets, cursing his lack of antibiotics, of a secure phone line, of any kind of medical kit.

He remembered his and Nash’s shared bottle of sour cherry pálinka, its syrupy flavor both sweet and wincingly bitter on his tongue. He remembered the way Nash had turned away from him as they sat slumped against the wall, the empty bottle between them, their stomachs grumbling; Nash’s shoulders had begun shaking gently. And Arthur had wanted nothing more than to push away from the wall, away from Nash and his big, wet doe eyes, away from where Cobb lay dying in the other room, away from the memory of a dead girl, but instead he’d laid a hand on Nash’s trembling shoulder, leaned in so his forehead was buried in his long hair, his lips against Nash’s ear and just whispered, _hey_ , over and over until Nash quieted.

He remembered how Nash had let out a shuddering sigh, then, and, planting his head in his hands, opened his mouth to sputter up words and emotions that Arthur had never wanted to witness. _You and Cobb, you’re like this perfect fucking couple, and you, you would do anything for him. . . . anything, you’re his . . . his rock, and I would fucking kill . . . fucking kill for someone to look at me the way you look at him. Or . . . or the way he says your name, all soft and shit, like he knows that you’ll always be there, like he knows wherever you are in the room, you can’t be far away, because you . . . just . . . you fucking care. And I want . . . I want to be a part of that so bad that it hurts . . . it fucking hurts. You won’t fucking leave Cobb here . . . you won’t, and he won’t die because you’re here, but if it were me, if it were me back there on that bed . . ._ He remembered how much he had needed to shut Nash up, to stopper that sobbing, angry voice rising in volume like a predator in pain, to close the words out before they dug in too deep. He remembered how he’d wanted to tell Nash that if only he knew what it felt like to be with Cobb and never be with Cobb, then he’d shut the hell up, because it was a cold, sexless hell to be chained to him, fearing he wouldn’t be able to save him from following Mal. He remembered how Nash had looked like shit with bloodshot, puffy eyes and pale skin, but that he hadn’t cared, because there was a softness there, too, that he’d wanted to touch. He remembered thinking how it’d been months since he’d felt anyone’s hand on his cock but his own. He remembered how death had hovered in the days behind them, still breathing down their necks. He remembered how he had bent forward, jerking Nash’s jaw up to face him, and stopped his words with his lips. And how Nash had gasped and opened his mouth under Arthur’s, aggressively shoving between Arthur’s lips, sucking at his tongue, shuddering as he latched his fingers into Arthur’s shoulder blades, hauling him closer.

He remembered how the pressure in his chest, the ache in his groin had suddenly been too much, too tight, and he’d shoved Nash away, scrambled over to upend his duffle bag, rifled through the clothes, the weapons, the electronics, the shaving kit.

“I’m out of condoms.” Arthur had turned to where Nash was slumped against the wall.

For a beat, Nash had stared back at him, eyes glazed, slack-jawed. Then, on all fours, he’d crawled over to Arthur; hungry, pale, he’d held his gaze and unzipped his own fly, baring his flushed cock to Arthur.

“Forget it, just get your hand on me,” he said quietly, a weighty challenge.

So they’d settled for jacking each other off furiously in their fingerless military-issue gloves, trousers around their knees, sweaters and shirts pushed high on their chests, around their bandages. He’d removed the glove of his left hand with a drag of his teeth, then twisted and buried two, three spit-slicked fingers inside Nash and watched him tremble, flinch, and finally come hard with a raw shout. As Nash’s ass contracted over the sinew and knuckles of Arthur’s fingers, Arthur had wanted more of him so fiercely that it felt like a punch to the solar plexus. He’d bitten down on Nash’s neck as his release burst out of him into the scratchy wool of Nash’s glove.

Though it hadn’t been exactly a pity fuck, it wasn’t anything Arthur was proud of, either.

Cobb’s fever had broken early the next morning, and afterward, late in the frozen night, their long-awaited contact had arrived in an armored car to drive them to the Slovakian border. They’d never spoken of that night.

 _Nash will kill you if given the chance._ He had to remember that. That this Nash, bruised and stumbling, armed with a gun and his own bitterness was not _that_ Nash. He’d switched sides, shifting direction as smoothly as a weathervane in the wind. His body squirmed underneath Arthur, and, as Arthur tried to keep him still with the weight of his hips, the bind of his hands, he realized that Nash wasn’t trying to free himself from Arthur’s grasp. He was grinding hard against Arthur’s thigh, searching for friction.

Arthur reared back as much as he could while still keeping his grip and he fixed Nash with a hard stare he hoped would intimidate. Only three lamps glowed in the cavernous warehouse, and in the dim light, Nash’s eyes looked almost black, round points of darkness glaring up at Arthur while he undulated purposefully against him, taunting him. Neither spoke, Nash just sucked down huge, gulping inhales as he watched Arthur, rutting against him. Arthur felt the stiffness of his muscles seizing up after a hard fight, felt his thighs clenching where Nash moved hotly against him, and he felt the slight give of Nash’s belly under his own hardening cock.

No, he refused to have this response. He forced his mind away from the taut body under him, turning his head to analyze the bits of dirt and dust scattered across the naked floor; a foot away, two drops of blood glistened as they dried.

“G-go on,” Nash stammered softly—his hot breath winding its way into Arthur’s ear, inside his head, sending a spark of awareness skittering along his skin all the way down to Arthur’s fingertips—“tell me how you don’t . . . don’t want this, and how you didn’t want it back in Budapest.” His frantic movements tempered and slowed, simultaneously becoming more insistent, as he rubbed long, brutally hard waves against Arthur’s thigh. Arthur’s cock twitched against Nash’s stomach, and he closed his eyes, trying to shut it all out, his grip on Nash’s wrists his only anchor.

“Tell me I’m a fuckup, that you . . . you never wanted me on your team, in your life. Tell me how Cobb couldn’t even be fucking bothered to . . . to pull the trigger on me, because he didn’t care. How he worked with me for three years and didn’t even care how it ended.”

Nash began moving faster again, grinding his hips back and forth in a steady rhythm against Arthur, panting slightly between words. “Look at me, fucking look at me, you fuck.”

“Cut it out, Nash.” He kept his face turned away and tried to instill as much power in his low voice as possible.

“Or what?” Nash bucked up against him.

Arthur nailed his fingers hard into Nash’s wrists, trying to think.

“Or fucking what?” Nash moaned breathily, and then Arthur felt Nash contracting the muscles of his abdomen under him as he leaned up to bite at Arthur’s earlobe. The tug of teeth against soft flesh sent a constricting spiral through Arthur’s chest and sharp needles pricking over his skin and through his nipples where his shirt was rubbing against the thin fabric of Nash’s. He stilled as Nash shifted infinitesimally under him, scratching his teeth over a tendon in Arthur’s neck, right under his ear.

And wasn’t this what he had wanted, a body to push against, to burn the restless thoughts from his brain like a brushfire, to find the pinpoint of focus, the razor’s edge of clarity in the limits of his own body, of someone else’s?

“You are such a fucking asshole,” Arthur said softly as he snapped his head around so quickly he almost rammed his nose into Nash’s cheekbone.

 _Nash wants to kill you._ Then again, he’d never had any problem handling Nash. So what if Nash wanted to kill him? _I’d like to see him try._

“What the fuck are you going to do to me, then? You useless fuck . . .”

He picked up Nash’s wrists and slammed then down again, hard.

And this is how the night should have gone: With an effective clinch around Nash’s neck, Arthur should have forced him into a headlock and exerted pressure on his carotid artery, cutting off the blood to his head, rendering him unconscious. He should have perched him in the chair, bound his hands and feet and tortured every bit of information out of him when he came to—why Cobol was after them, how to strike back at them, what Cobol’s connection with Fischer Morrow was, if word about their planned inception was buzzing in the dreamshare underground—then handed him back to Cobol. He should have hit him for all his muddled brain was still worth and then watched him limp away to be buried in a dark hole.

Or this is another way the night should have gone: Nash never should have found Arthur, should be tearing his own hair out in a hotel room, hands shaking as he stared at useless leads and a phone list of contacts who would no longer speak to him. Arthur should have turned off his computer, set the security code, chained up the warehouse, and skipped dinner to lose himself in the warm, damp press of half-naked bodies on a dance floor. He should have been jerking his hips to the too-fast beat of drum and bass, to the whir of lights on muscles and flesh around him. He should have found a mouth, a pair of capable hands, a hot hungry body to crowd against, to haul to the backroom, to shove to his knees in front of him, or spin and slam chest-first into the wall. He should have gone back to his hotel alone, sated and sweaty, his thoughts curling up quietly at the back of his mind so he could finally sleep.

But instead, he cut off Nash’s ramblings by biting at his lips so sharply he drew blood, by spearing his tongue into Nash’s mouth, by giving into wanting his rough edges and his soft inadequacies and all the caustic emotions breaking out of him. Nash reared up into him, meeting him stroke for stroke, flooding him with his desperation, thrashing and grinding wildly against him, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Nash groaned in a low, almost broken voice, “C’mon, rip me . . . rip me the fuck apart.”

Arthur ached with how bad he needed it, to tear Nash apart right then, piece by wretched piece. It was as though he were staring at a fracture marking a pane of glass, cracked but still whole, and wanting to see how much brute force it could take before shattering, how much pressure the thin surface could absorb before tumbling down into shards at his feet.

Shifting Nash’s wrists so they were trapped within the bitingly tight circle of his right hand, he raked his left through Nash’s hair, tugging at it hard.

As Arthur pinched and trailed his fingers over the yielding flesh along Nash’s torso—the dark points of his nipples through his stained white shirt, the ridges around his ribcage, the slight give where his thin stomach began and then up and under the shirt, sweeping over bruises he couldn’t see but he knew had to be there—Nash moaned, losing his grasp on words, unable to do anything but sputter incomprehensibly and arch up into Arthur.

But Arthur pulled away, bearing his weight on his knees, denying him his thigh, the friction Nash was panting for. He keened at the loss and his eyes flashed open—darkly accusing.

“Hey,” Arthur said softly, the first gentle syllable he’d spoken to Nash since . . . long before Tokyo. His fingers trailed up his chest to press his stubbled, bruised cheek. “You want me to take you apart, I’ll take you apart. I’ll give you more than you ever thought you could take.” His own voice felt like honey on his tongue, thick, low, sweeter than fuck. “That’s what you came here for isn’t it? I know. _I know._ Just trust me. Let me.” It was a promise he shouldn’t be making. It was a promise that flared white-hot and razed away everything else hovering around the edges of his mind. It was a promise that negated Cobb, and Saito and the first impossibly serious gig they had had in years, the first job that really foreshadowed a new future. It was a promise that denied the way Nash had turned tail and sold them out the first minute he could.

But Arthur let that fall away. He let it fall away so that something could be his, just his and his alone. His to fix, his to explore, his to shatter, his to own. So that he could feel something solid under his fingertips, something, someone he wasn’t ceding to dreams inch by inch. So he could get something right, just once.

As the low promise fell from Arthur’s lips, Nash stilled; his shoulders relaxed, his breathing slowed, and the gaze he turned on Arthur in the shadowy light was open, unguarded.

“Good,” Arthur said gently, feeling that side of himself take over, that side that always knew what to do. “Now I’m going to let your hands go, and you’re going to stay still. Yeah?”

Nash bit his lip and nodded.

Arthur released him and a notch of tension hitched into Nash’s shoulders. Before he could let himself think, before he could give Nash space to think, Arthur leaned over him, grabbing the hem of his T-shirt in both hands and tearing upwards. The fabric split in two, hanging limply to each side, revealing a thick swath of gauze at Nash’s hip, a patchwork mess of bruises swirling up his ribs. As Arthur stared, tracing his fingertips over the yellowing pattern, Nash’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he squirmed, sitting half-up on his elbows.

“I told you to stay still.”

“I can’t.”

Pressing a palm to his sternum, Arthur shoved Nash back down. “Yes, you can,” he ordered evenly, then he paused until Nash was focusing on at him again. “Now stay put.”

Arthur stood and stalked away, swiping the gun from the ground on the way to his desk. He clicked the safety on the Walther PPK back in place and tucked it under his belt, the metal cool against the small of his back.

He opened the bottom desk drawer, shoved aside his own Glock, his combat knife, a sheaf of files and a spilled package of gum, and grabbed a handful of lube packets. He ignored the box of condoms. That wasn’t what Nash needed tonight.

When he turned back to Nash, he was up on his elbows again, fiddling with the surgical tape holding down his bandage.

“I told you not to move.”

Nash cast his eyes at the floor. “Fuck you.”

“Fine. Then since you’re so twitchy, stand up and take all your clothes off.” Arthur fished out the PPK and gestured with it at the remains of Nash’s shirt, his leather jacket, his stained jeans.

He kept the gun out as Nash undressed hastily, one pant leg stubbornly refusing to yield, forcing him to hop on one foot as he turned the jeans inside out, tugging. Finally he stood naked in front of Arthur, his heavy, flushed erection a dark contrast to his bruise-mottled skin. A second thin strip of gauze ran up the inside of Nash’s right thigh.

“I fucking hate you,” Nash growled, glancing up to meet Arthur’s eyes defiantly.

Arthur held his gaze as he paced over to him. “Then why are you doing this? You asked for this, remember,” he said sharply. “I would have been happy just to kill you and get on with my evening.”

Nash swallowed, his Adam’s apple standing out against the line of his throat. “I know,” he said quietly, looking down again.

Arthur stepped closer. “So why are you doing this?”

Nash shrugged, still not meeting his eyes.

“If you have some half-assed plan of seducing information out of me, then you’re really stupider than I thought.”

Nash’s lips thinned into a single, angry line.

“I thought so.” Arthur paused, examining the down-turned angle of Nash’s neck.

“So what can we agree on? Not to kill each other for the rest of the night, for old time’s sake?”

“Maybe.” Nash shrugged. “Or how about not to kill each other until we get off?” he bit out, jerking his head up to glare at Arthur.

“Fine.” Arthur strode over to the lounge chairs set up for dreaming. He picked up two pillows and tossed them at Nash’s feet. “Lie down on your chest. Face in the pillow, hands behind your back,” Arthur ordered softly, tucking the gun into his belt again.

Nash complied, awkwardly shuffling around to his knees, hissing as he gingerly stretched out flat on his chest, naked skin to dirty concrete, turning his face to the side on the pillow, supporting his weight on his shoulders and palms, elbows bent.

“I said, hands behind your back.” Arthur leaned down and knocked Nash’s right palm from under him, tugging it to the small of his back, and Nash reached around with his left, going slack, erection pressing into the floor. Arthur wished he had some rope or his double-lock handcuffs.

Pausing for a minute as he loomed over Nash’s prone form, Arthur inhaled, checking in with his body to feel the steady, low thrum of need in his blood, the twitching press of his own desire against the fabric of his briefs. And for however long this thing would last, Nash was his, at his mercy, at his whim, his to explore, but also his to take care of, his to smooth away the rough edges.

Still fully clothed, Arthur knelt by Nash’s skinny ass, settling his weight on Nash’s left thigh, which was less damaged, less cut up than his right. Bruise-mottled body trembling, Nash vibrated, a twitchy scavenger fighting against his own need to submit. Nash intertwined his fingers behind his back, gripping and releasing his own knuckles in time with a subtle spasming in his back.

“You just can’t hold still can you?” Arthur asked matter-of-factly as he shifted Nash’s body so the second pillow lay under his hips. He wrapped his left hand around both Nash’s wrists, fingers clamping against bony knobs, and swept his right palm up Nash’s spine. Under him, Nash panted, his breaths gulping stutters in the quiet room. “I’ll make you still. I’ll wring you out. I’m shatter you into so many pieces you won’t recognize yourself.” Rubbing his hand up and down the bumps of Nash’s spine, Arthur spoke in a low voice, narrowing his awareness to the thin, marked skin underneath his fingers, and to his own sharp need, hard-edged and constricting, fixing him to the spot like a spike impaling him.

He tightened his hold on Nash’s wrists, hoping his nails were biting half-moons into the translucent skin over Nash’s veins, and edged two fingers over the curve of his spine, prying between the press of his butt cheeks, finding the unyielding knot of muscle there, circling it lightly. Under his fingers, Nash’s inhales rasped harshly against the back of his throat, low, agitated sounds.

“You remember Budapest, Nash,” Arthur said softly, not halting the gentle back and forth of his fingers over his hole. “You remember how I got so many fingers in your greedy ass with nothing but spit. You were fucking insatiable that night.”

Nash’s hips bucked up and down, pressing alternately into the pillow and Arthur’s fingers, like he was unsure if he needed to get closer to Arthur’s dry touch, or farther away.

With his other hand, Arthur twisted at Nash’s wrists, jamming them into his lower back, drinking up the gorgeous line of his straining arms, locked elbows. “Think you can take my whole hand this time?”

Nash thrashed his head from side to side. “Just fuck me, you fucker,” he sputtered.

“I will,” Arthur heard his voice, smooth, blank, and low, “with my hand. I’m going to get my whole fist up inside you, give you everything you can take, get farther into you than anyone’s ever been. You want that, don’t you?”

He leaned forward, pressing his chest against Nash’s back, and bit hard below his shoulder, at a spot of unmarked skin, rolling muscle and flesh between his teeth. Nash tensed, then went lax for the briefest of seconds under him.

“Tell me how much you want it,” he hissed into Nash’s skin.

With his right hand, Arthur groped for the lube, not wanting to release his clamping hold on Nash’s wrists.

He bit another mark into his shoulder. He would give him what he needed, but Arthur needed something first. “You do want it, don’t you? Say it. Your slutty ass wants it.” Nash shuddered, and Arthur craned his neck to stare at his bruised and puffy profile, gorgeous in its hurt.

“Yeah,” Nash whispered on an exhale.

“Yeah, what?”

Nash shoved against Arthur’s hold on his wrists, a trapped animal’s muscles eking out their final charge. Bearing down with all his weight on the spot where their hands tangled, Arthur just rode it out, pinning him hard, pressing bruises into Nash’s fragile wrists, not giving him a fucking inch. Chest flush to Nash’s back, the knot of their hands jammed against his belly, his own cock stretched hard against the stiff fabric of his trousers over the flex of Nash’s buttocks, he held him down with every surface on his body.

“Yeah, I’ll take whatever the fuck you’ll give me,” Nash rasped, his body’s roiling finally subsiding under Arthur’s strength. “Your fingers, your hand, yeah . . . yeah. Give it to me.”

“I knew it.” Arthur lifted a lube packet to his mouth, tore it open with his teeth, let it slither down his chin, over the fingers of his right hand. He tore open two more, watching it dribbling down his wrist, a shiny streak on the inside of his forearm. The empty packets skidded across the dusty ground, the only other sound in the vast space Nash’s harsh pants.

Arthur bent closer to Nash’s skin and wiped his mouth and tongue over his bruises, painting a wet trail of spit and lube over his back, sending Nash into squirming tremors. He ended his trail with a deep bite at the base of his spine, tasting the musk of old sweat and grime, then braced himself against Nash’s held hands and pushed up to sitting.

“Now spread for me.” He perched on Nash’s good leg again and elbowed his right thigh open, mindful of the gauze strip, white against his bruised flesh. “Wider, c’mon.” Nash complied in jerky movements.

“How long has it been since someone did this to you? Since someone’s been inside you?”

He ran his lube-wet fingers over the knobs of Nash’s spine, pottery-hard, fragile, smearing circles into his lower back, teasing over the crease of his ass.

“They didn’t bother, did they? Just beat you up, treating you like useless pulp, hurt you quick and fast, punished you for being the fuckup you are.”

Nash bit his swollen bottom lip and nodded. He’d gone pliant, silent, jaw set, eyes bright and wide open and staring at nothing. Arthur’s voice dropped low, the words emanating from somewhere rock solid in his gut as everything in his peripheral vision grayed, leaving him with Nash’s profile, the wounds scattered across Nash’s legs and back, the uneven rise and fall of his ribcage.

“And that’s why you came here, isn’t it? You knew you’d never get anything for Cobol out of me. You really came hoping I’d take care of you, hoping I’d fuck you into tomorrow.”

Without warning, he plunged two fingers into Nash’s furled entrance; tight and hot, it relented for him, gripping his fingers. “You didn’t come because Cobol told you to. You came for this.”

Nash bit his lip so hard it whitened around the straight edge of his teeth, kicked his legs wider, undulated his ass against Arthur’s hands that held him, opened him. Silently, he was pleading for more.

“God, you’re a fucking wreck, Nash. A beautiful fucking wreck.” He twisted inside him, rolled against the ridged walls tightening around his fingers, making room so he could slowly screw a third finger in along the other two, relishing the squelching sound of his slick fingers moving deep inside. “Shhh, we’ve got so much more to go, don’t we? Just relax.” With his thumb he skimmed over the sparse hair and pebbled skin of Nash’s perineum, tapped at it, drawing a low whine from Nash’s throat, pausing for a moment just to admire the sight of his three fingers swallowed up by Nash’s expanded hole, the sight of Nash’s balls, dark and wrinkled, pillowed on either side of his stiff cock—trapped helplessly between his body and the flat fabric under him—pointing back at Arthur, precome dribbling from its slit.

In Arthur’s left hand, Nash’s clenched fingers were unwinding, yet there was still a zigzag of tense lines in his shoulders, his back, his arms. Slowly, he was giving himself over to Arthur muscle by muscle, bruise by bruise, silence by silence. For this he needed Arthur. Flaring up, insistent, Arthur’s want spiraled down his spine and throbbed into his cock; he shuddered, deliberately clamping down on it. He would wait as long as this took.

“Tell me what they did to you,” he ordered softly, continually running his thumb across the vulnerable flesh of his perineum.

Nash thrashed his head against the pillow, fisted his hands again under Arthur’s grip.

“Go on, find words. Tell me.”

“Why . . . why the fuck should I do that?” Nash stuttered through rasping exhales.

“Because I’ll take it. I’ll take care of it. Now do as I say.”

Dropping his head back to the pillow, Nash’s upper body collapsed again, a motionless sprawl except for the expansion and contractions of his ribcage, the shift of his wrists against each other in Arthur’s clasp, the pull of his ass around Arthur’s fingers.

“Tell me. What was the first thing they did to you?” Arthur crooked his fingers, feeling for that hard button-like mound.

“Locked . . . locked me in a basement . . . no windows.” Nash’s voice was shaky, thin, barely audible. There, there it was; with his three fingers, Arthur pushed gently against the bulge he had found, felt it push back against him, stiff and unrelenting as Nash’s entire form jittered under him.

“And then what?”

“Dunno . . . I . . . Jesus, Arthur,” Nash growled on an exhale between clenched teeth.

Arthur stilled his ministrations. “And then what?” he asked coolly.

“Fuck, okay, okay,” Nash stammered. “And then I dunno after two days three days no water no food no light and it was hot as balls fucking dry as a desert in there then and ah ah . . . right there right fucking there and they came down to ask me why you and Cobb were working for Saito now and they were going to shoot me when they realized I didn’t know and I tried to make up a lie but I wasn’t quick enough not fucking able to think after three four days in darkness and no no don’t fucking stop . . . so they said they’d shoot me after right then ’cause I was useless to them and just the third-man on the team and no power and they had fucking scary-ass knives and they were kicking and cutting at me . . . and they were arguing couldn’t decide to cut me up or shoot me but I I told them that I was worth more alive than dead and that I could get all kinds of dirt on the dream-sharing community and on Saito and on you and on Cobb and that I was the best asset they could keep and they bought it they bought it and bought me and then I tracked you down and man were you easy to find you need and oh fucking God like that you need a new rotation of aliases you stupid fuck Arthur Dean and Dean Arthur and Arthur Grey and Grey Arthur and really man you make it so fucking easy and here I am because I’m lucky because I adapt.” The words flooded out of him as Arthur’s fingers pressed down and shifted away and pressed again and stretched him for more and Nash was close, so close he was jostling his hips into the pillow, his balls drawing tight around his cock.

“And now you’re here. Good, that’s good, Nash.” Pressure shattering a cracked glass. “But you’re not going to come until I get my whole hand inside of you,” Arthur said firmly. “Your ass is so greedy, you wouldn’t be happy with anything less would you?”

Nash swallowed, his eyes were glazed over and he closed them, features twisting with tension. “N . . . no,” he replied on an exhale. And Arthur knew instinctively that that was the last word he was going to get from him, that he’d gotten him that far, to that edge. It wasn’t much farther to tip him over it, to take him into the floating oblivion where he needed to go.

Heady power settled over Arthur, sparking across his scalp, shuddering into his skin and forging his whole body into a sharp blade.

“It’s okay, I’ll give it to you,” he promised smoothly, curling his fingers so his knuckles were brushing against that spot that made Nash stutter, nudging his hand in farther, gently prying the clench of Nash’s entrance open with the addition of his pinky. Nash’s whole body seized up, his eyes squeezing shut, his teeth jabbing into his lips, his shoulders migrating to his neck, his fingers twisting into each other where Arthur pinned them down, his ass cheeks quivering.

“You can do this, you can, just let it go,” Arthur urged as he made soothing noises and released Nash’s wrists, letting them fall uselessly to his sides. With his now-free left hand, he skimmed over the fine downy hairs standing on end on Nash’s lower back. “Let go, I’ve got you now.” For long minutes, he just breathed, he was barely in his own skin, just in Nash’s now, watching the lines of Nash’s body, the movements of his own hand over Nash’s skin, feeling the stuttering clutch of Nash’s ass around his fingers.

And then, with a hoarse moan, Nash went lax, his muscles slackening through his long back, the pinch of his eyelids smoothing over. “There . . . there it is.” Arthur’s loosened voice created a small bubble of sound just for them in this empty space. As he spoke, he tucked his thumb to his pinky and nudged his hand farther in, the air deserting his lungs as he watched Nash’s ass suck down his whole hand to the wrist. And finally, finally he was filling him up, holding him down the way they both needed. He let his senses telescope down to that one hand, feeling only the tight force of Nash’s channel clamping his fingers together, the hot ring of muscles closing around his wrist, all his own aching desire a dull backdrop to the close-up of how Nash felt inside. He didn’t know how long they stayed frozen like that, melded together, not moving, Nash carefully split open on Arthur’s hand, Arthur listening to their gulping overlapping breathing, watching the slight expansion and contraction of Nash’s ribcage.

The silence broke when Nash grunted and rocked back into Arthur.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, right,” Arthur responded, startled back into his own body, trembling with the force he was reigning in. With care, he rose off Nash’s leg, slipped his free hand to Nash’s hip and urged his ass off the pillow, higher into the air. Every slight shift in Nash’s body rippled through the tender walls closed over Arthur’s fist; he moved with Nash, from deep inside him. Cautiously, he repositioned himself so he was kneeling directly behind him, between the spread of his thighs, staring at the skin stretched around the spot where his arm disappeared.

Nash let out a gusting sigh and dropped his forehead to press into the other pillow. His cock was softening, head drooping, shaft shrinking back into his body, balls hanging low and heavy, muscles of his thighs vibrating infinitesimally, uncontrollably.

“You alright?” Arthur asked. “You need me to stop?”

Nash shook his head against the pillow, exhaling steadily, like he was trying to pin himself to the earth through his breath alone.

“Let’s get you back there, then, okay?” Arthur shuffled closer on his knees, craned his neck to lick messily, gently at the juncture between Nash’s muscle and the skin of his own arm. At the first flick of his tongue, Nash startled, jostled back against Arthur, but his breathing quickened as the obscene sloppy sounds of Arthur’s tongue teasing around his hole filled the spaces left between them. Nash tasted like lube and dirt and desperation. And Arthur ate him up, taking it all.

With his free hand, he cupped Nash’s balls, rolling the tender weighty flesh slowly between fingers and palm. Only when he was satisfied that he knew the texture and feel of them and could identify it blindfolded, did he leave them behind, lift his hand to spit in his palm, and then skim his fingertips over Nash’s cock, feeling its responding jerk. Closing his fingers around its warmth, he encircled it from thumb to palm to fingertip, tightening around its shaft, splaying his fingers wide over the length. In the fist of Arthur’s hand, the muscle under the velvety skin of Nash’s cock stiffened, stretched, reached and Nash’s whole body trembled. And then, ever so slowly, Arthur jolted him from base to tip, with just enough lubrication to create friction. One fist inside him, knuckles rotating nimbly, unhurriedly against his prostate, one fist rippling over his cock.

Arthur moved to bite at Nash’s right butt cheek, and Nash hollered, a quick guttural cry as Arthur watched the blood bloom just under the skin in a bright red oval. “You’re mine right now, mine, you hear that?” he grunted against Nash’s skin as his hand quickened on his cock. And in that moment, his words tasted like truth. “You beautiful fucking mess, you. You’re gorgeous . . .” he bit down hard on the other side of his ass, eliciting a low, vibrating moan that Arthur felt in his teeth, “gorgeous like this the way you just give yourself up, turn yourself over to me so fucking completely. You knew you could never take me with that gun, you knew that it was me who had to take you.” He laved his tongue over the bite marks on his ass, soothing the skin that must have burned, ached. “You came here to give everything up to me. Because that’s what you do best. Give yourself over.” Nash growled, desperate, broken apart and then with a low, strangled animalistic yelp torn from his throat, he stilled, shoved back into Arthur’s face, and spurted hot and long over his hand, his ass stuttering and clenching and twitching around the firm bones of Arthur’s fist.

“There, there,” Arthur murmured softly as Nash’s tremors ebbed to stillness. Reluctantly, he lifted his right hand from Nash’s softening flesh, bringing it up to brace against his hip as he gently spun his other hand free, edging it out of the tight channel where it had been lodged.

“God . . . fucking . . . Jesus . . . fucking . . . Christ . . . Arthur,” Nash stammered softly, language coming back to him in fits and starts as his body finally quieted; depleted, sated, he slumped onto the ground, sprawling his legs wide.

Only when Arthur was sure Nash wasn’t going to move did he raise his sticky fingers to his own fly, shove his pants to his knees, distantly register the clatter of the PPK dropping from his waistband to the ground, and release his cock from his briefs, his cock that was beyond aching, beyond hurt. Gazing with satisfaction at the tableau of Nash’s ass—the reddened marks, the slope of his thin cheeks, and the gorgeous, inviting dip spread across the center of it, a veritable valley created by his stretched asshole—Arthur knew he had taken care of him. And using the lubed and messy hand that had been buried in Nash, he stroked himself in long, slow motions that shivered down into his thighs and trembled in his sore knees. Staring down into Nash, he forced his eyes to stay open as his release spread slow and thick through his limbs, climbed into his cock with the greatest of effort, and tumbled out of him, slashing translucent white lines across the bruises on his lower back, over the marks on his left butt cheek, splashing into the dust next to his hip.

Spent and finished, Arthur collapsed to the side of Nash, banding an arm over his shoulders as he buried his nose into his neck, smelling the sex-heavy air around them. Arthur closed his eyes and gave over to the unconsciousness that was lapping insistently at the edges of his awareness.

He startled awake to Nash’s nose brushing lightly against his. His arm was still slung over Nash’s shoulder; his thigh had tangled between Nash’s legs. Dark eyes heavy with exhaustion, and features finally still, Nash looked at Arthur and smiled slowly. Arthur’s body reverberated with all the ways he had pushed Nash, all the ways he had taken him. He returned the smile and brushed sweat-soaked strands of hair from Nash’s forehead; he could allow himself that before he relinquished what was no longer his, what had never really been his in the first place.

“You’re not going back to Cobol, Nash.” He spoke quietly, cradling Nash’s bruised cheek in his palm, unable to stop touching him.

Nash nodded, not breaking eye contact.

Arthur struggled to intertwine strands of thoughts, to piece together a way out. “I’ll give you the name of a contact here in Paris who will outfit you with a new ID. And I want you to get out of the country, off the continent in twenty-four hours. You’re not really safe from Cobol unless you’re holed up in the States or South America.”

“I know.” Nash sounded quietly uncaring, as if he were floating somewhere far above all the worries of the flesh and his own small existence.

Silence alighted on the space between them and they stared at each other for a long time in the gloomy light.

Nash closed his eyes and inhaled shakily. “Come with me,” he mumbled so softly Arthur barely heard him.

“I can’t . . . this job,” Arthur focused on lightly tracing the bruise on Nash’s cheekbone. “I can’t leave Cobb.”

Nash looked away. “I know,” he said blankly. His mouth frowned into a tight line and he turned away from Arthur, sliding his body out from under Arthur’s grip, rolling away and grunting as he pushed up. While he dressed, motion returned to his body, his hands twitched slightly, he tucked his stringy hair behind his ear, tapped his foot in his leather boot.

Arthur stood, yanking up his underwear and pants, and plunged his hands into his pockets and stared at the drying smears of seed and lube on the floor, at the crumpled, come-covered pillows.

“So you going to give me the name of that contact?” Nash bit out as he came to stand shirtless, dressed in his jeans and boots in front of Arthur, not meeting his eyes.

“Yeah.” Arthur moved to shuffle through a few papers on his desk; he scratched out a name and number on a blank scrap. Suddenly everything inside him clenched tightly, torturously, and more than anything he needed silence. He wanted Nash out of his space, out of his life. “Nash, if you go back to Cobol, if you ever come sniffing around here again, I _will_ shoot you,” he said flatly.

“Yeah, fuck you, too.” Nash grinned at him, held up the paper Arthur had given him between his fingers. “Thanks for this.” He shrugged on his leather jacket gingerly, zipped it to cover his bare chest.

“Yeah.” Arthur smiled grimly and glanced away, not wanting to see a lurking shadow of uncertainty, or, even worse, a smug blaze of triumph in Nash’s brown eyes, not wanting to think about the dip of his stretched asshole under his jeans, not wanting to wonder if Nash would crane in a mirror to trace the path of bites that Arthur had marked on his cheeks; he didn’t look up until he heard the slam of the door and Nash’s receding footfalls on the sidewalk.

He stood still in the murky light of the warehouse for a long time, staring unfocused at nothing, thinking nothing.

Then he picked up the two torn halves of Nash’s T-shirt, ran his fingers over the fabric, over the dirt and the dried blood that had seeped from Nash’s body, over the ragged edges where it had split over his warm chest. He picked Nash’s PPK up from the ground, wrapped it in the remnants of his shirt.

He moved methodically around the space, refusing to rush even though it was suddenly, fiercely choking him with its emptiness: packing up his laptop, the PASIV, shoving files back into desk drawers and locking them, and finally securing the wrapped pistol in the side pocket of his laptop bag.

Arthur turned off the lights, set the alarm, locked and chained the heavy doors, and forcibly turned his mind to Cobb, to Eames, to their need for a chemist, to the impossibility of their task, to all that stood before them. It was as if Nash had never happened. It had to be.


End file.
